


Dead Draw

by nonisland



Category: Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Genre: (erika get over yourself LITERALLY EVERYONE will be better off for it), Episode 6 Chapter 9 (Umineko no Naku Koro ni), Episode 6: Dawn of the Golden Witch, F/F, Pining, Prompt Fic, Rare Pairings, Red & Blue Truths, Unrequited Love, Witch Chess, mixed VN and manga canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 20:14:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30144972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: dead draw:in chess, “a drawn position in which neither player has any realistic chance to win, [whether] a position in which it is impossible for either player to win [or] a simple, lifeless position […]”Dlanor is too experienced a player to touch a game piece she is not prepared to move, futile as it will be to move these, but they invite admiration. She is not heartless: she admires them, few as they are.
Relationships: Furudo Erika/Dlanor A. Knox, Furudo Erika/Furudo Erika's Ex-Boyfriend
Kudos: 8





	Dead Draw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mondegreen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mondegreen/gifts).



> From my _previous_ twitter fic prompt meme (you can read it as a prequel to “[all my stumbling phrases never amounted to anything worth this feeling](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29933781)” if you’d like, since that one was requested in response to this). I set it aside to rearrange a bit and forgot about it until today.
> 
> The dialogue here (implicit and explicit) is taken directly from the sound novel, but the rest of it draws from manga canon. Chess definitions (the rest in the endnotes) are taken from Wikipedia. I do not know how to play chess (but neither does anyone in Umineko).
> 
> * * *

Lady Erika’s seven dozen pawns are exquisitely crafted: their lines are crisp and their proportions define them as both geometry and art. The sourceless light makes them gleam like steel.

Dlanor’s own half-dozen are just as lovely. They are very small, and look smaller in comparison to the mass of Lady Erika’s across the board, but they are beautifully-turned. The whole set is, from the subtle curves of the pawns to the plain strength of the rooks to the delicacy of the king’s crown. Dlanor is too experienced a player to touch a game piece she is not prepared to move, futile as it will be to move these, but they invite admiration. She is not heartless: she admires them, few as they are.

 **One: He stayed with Erika one day when she was sick.** (Dlanor could not have imagined Lady Erika sick before right now, quiet and soft in a room enclosed by rain. It seems a very natural thing to stay with her as she lies curled up on the bed, but Lady Erika hardly wants Dlanor to stay.)

Her move, though she can see all the way to defeat already. She asks for evidence. She gets it; Lady Erika’s pieces are heavier than ivory when they strike.

 **Two: He refrained from dismissing Erika’s interest in detection. Sometimes he asked about her studies.** (Absurd. Dlanor deeply regrets for Lady Erika’s sake that this is one of the pieces Lady Erika has given her to play.)

She counters Lady Erika’s move as best she can. Her six pieces are no heavier than Lady Erika’s. Dlanor feels they should have more weight in her hand. They should be as heavy as gold. 

**Three: An object: a pendant in the shape of a magnifying glass, picked up the previous week. “It reminded me of you.”** (Lady Erika had thrown the pendant out once she reached her conclusion. Dlanor thinks it would have looked charming on her.)

She goes on the counterattack. There are no pawns left to her, and Lady Erika has set her army aside as well, its purpose served. Dlanor’s counterattack is absurd. A foolish strategy. Lady Erika is too true to be unfaithful. If she had lost interest in the man, she would have told him. Dlanor watched her grieve in the fragments.

Lady Erika disallows the move: stalemate. Dlanor would have deserved the loss of the bishop she had made it with, but they continue without penalty.

 **Four: He cooked dinner one day even though there were no marks on the calendar, and cleaned up after.** (It had made Lady Erika smile after a busy week. Dlanor could learn to cook. She dislikes cleaning, but she is capable of it. There will be no need of either.)

She argues that Lady Erika’s evidence is not proof. If Lady Erika had caught him with another woman, that would be one thing, but she has not. For that Lady Erika takes both her rooks with the combined weight of the eighty-four pawns, sidelined as they are.

There is no red truth in the human world. Dlanor can feel the weight of her red key at her side, and ignores it. She can feel the weight of another truth in the back of her mind, heavier than the pieces Lady Erika has crafted, disallowed on this board. It would make a lovely queen.

 **Five: He still keeps a photograph of the two of them in his wallet.** (Lady Erika looks so happy in the photograph. In the fragment she had shoved it aside; Dlanor wishes she could handle it more gently.)

Lady Erika’s pieces advance; Dlanor is only a few moves away from being checked. Her king stands defenseless. She can only prolong the inevitable. She wonders how it must have felt for the man who was the first to play this side of the game. Dlanor can see the board; she knows the rules. More, she knows Lady Erika’s familiarity with them. How bewildered he must have been.

This is not a brilliancy. Lady Erika has done nothing spectacular with her strategy; her advantage on her own board is simply unsurmountable.

Dlanor says, quietly, “Then I frankly declare that, despite a lack of proof, I still love Lady Erika even now.”

He had done the same, when Lady Erika first confronted him. It is a losing strategy. Dlanor’s fingers tingle where the grip of her red key would press against them.

Lady Erika’s voice is still soft, for all its bitterness. “Not the red truth, so that’s ineffective. Even if it was red, that’d be a stalemate. After all, I’d have no move to counter with.”

This game is not Dlanor’s defeat alone. They were both certain to lose from the very start.

 **Six: He was planning a vacation with Erika when the play he was rehearsing finished.** (Lady Erika had wanted to go to the ocean; the trip she had been on when Lady Bernkastel found her was her gift to herself. There is not much by way of a proper ocean in Heaven, but there is a lovely beach looking out toward the Sea of Fragments which Dlanor enjoys. She wonders whether Lady Erika wanted the space and the promise of the ocean, or the sensory immediacy of salt and waves. A witch might be able to offer surf and tide; Dlanor cannot.)

She resigns.

For just a moment, she almost thought Lady Erika wanted her to escape that check somehow, but…she cannot.

The fluttering speed of her heart when she thought that Lady Erika was confessing to her, instead of repeating words she cannot believe, is true. It is irrelevant to the game. It is useless. Dlanor is not human, and she can speak her feelings in red, but she cannot make Lady Erika believe them. _That’d be a stalemate._ Better to play on.

Outside the windows the typhoon still rages. Lady Erika looks small and shaken on the bed for just a moment before she gathers her poise and her smirk around her. She looks at Dlanor, victorious. Unhappy.

Dlanor thinks, **I would very much like to see Lady Erika smile like she used to again.**

**Author's Note:**

> “ **Counter** ”/“ **counterattack** ” have meanings basically equivalent to common English use. A **stalemate** forces the game to end in a draw; to **resign** is to admit you cannot win but your opponent can. A " **brilliancy** " is “a game that contains a spectacular, deep, and beautiful strategic idea, combination, or original plan.” An “ **advantage** ” is the combination of factors that put a player in a better position to win—in Erika’s case, her greater number of pieces and command of strategy.
> 
> Some people play chess by the touch-move rule, requiring you to move the first piece you touch and leave it as soon as you release it; Dlanor abiding by that rule is the only chess realism in this fic.


End file.
